Johnnie Shand Kydd

“I’m an instinctive rather than a conceptual photographer,” says Johnnie Shand Kydd. “If I’m sitting at home waiting for inspiration to pay a visit then I’m in deep shit.” An admittedly indifferent student who was shuttled between Australia and England as a child, Shand Kydd was an art dealer before his casual snapshots of pals like Tracey Emin ended up in a book and gained notice from Charles Saatchi. But he really became serious about photography during a three-month solo trip to Naples, where he knew no one and didn’t speak the language—a sense of displacement that fired his creativity: “There is nothing I like more than checking into a cheap hotel with nothing but a well-thumbed paperback, weighed down with a huge sense of loneliness—then I feel as happy as Larry!” He has photographed the streets of Calcutta and the last 21 surviving veterans of WW I (“Loved the 106-year-old who woke up so fed up he muttered ‘I can’t even die!’”). And don’t expect Shand Kydd, who shoots exclusively on film, to succumb to the temptations of digital anytime soon. “People say, ‘But you can do anything with digital,’ which is the very reason I reject it,” he says. “I think you should look at the world with a naked eye, think about it, and then reach for the camera.” View additional work credits on MyFDB.

Self-portrait after bike crash, 2010